


And the world has somehow shifted

by AbbySomething



Category: Samurai Jack (Cartoon)
Genre: +1, 5+1 Things, Declarations Of Love, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/M, Implied/Referenced Burning as Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Nonconsensual touching/grabbing, Primarily canon-compliant with bonus content, Suicide Attempt, Surprise Kissing, Touch-Starved, happily taking ideas from The Fifth Element because boy howdy did i see some parallels there, including happy ending because fuck that canon ending amirite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-15
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-05-07 07:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14666076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbbySomething/pseuds/AbbySomething
Summary: A journey through the understanding of touch.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> -lays down seductively across the top of this fic- hello there
> 
> not sure i got her character right in all aspects but consider this an experiment to get a better feel for her anyway cuz i love her and ashi deserves the best. but as always im open to constructive crit
> 
> hope you enjoy reading anyway. Im definitely gunna be writing/drawing more jashi (or just ashi regardless) in the future, but rest assured jaku is still my ultimate otp

Her hatred of the samurai was now _tenfold_ of what it had been before.

He had caused her and her sisters to fail. She would ensure every moment of the rest of his miserable (and hopefully short) life was a nightmare.

Ashi glared at the samurai, her arms tied to her sides by her own chain-sickle, as she continued swinging back and forth. She _would_ find a way out of this, and she would finish the work for her master or die trying. Just like her sisters.

 _Pathetic. Weak_.

Suddenly she snarled and growled, flailing her legs as much as she could in her constrained state. The samurai had the audacity to walk up to her, standing _just_ outside of her ability to kick him.

“Die, _die!_ ” she started in, “Why won’t you _die?_ Scum! Aku will be triumphant! I will undo the evil that is you, samurai! I will kill you as long as I have breath in my body, I will _strike you down_!”

He stared at her, watchful and silent.

“Long live the glory of Aku!” She tried to give one last kick for good measure, but it fell short of his shin by about a foot. Her momentum was slowly coming to a halt, and her feet couldn’t reach the ground to give herself more traction or an easy means of disentangling herself.

“You are very troubled,” he finally said in a quieter voice than before, while lifting a hand to point at her before opening his hands out in front of himself, “And very confused. Aku is the evil one, not me!”

He glanced aside, and continued in a more contemplative tone, “I’ve met machines that are _programmed_ with such hate and lies, but never a human.”

She was not confused, or troubled, like the vile samurai tried to claim. She _knew_ he was the evil one. Why else would he be the enemy of the master?

“Deceiver! Worm! Scum!”

He turned his head back to her, looking a little more exasperated, “Now you are just repeating yourself.”

Ashi squirmed in the chains again, growling with the effort, but all it did was jerk her around in mid-air. If she could just squeeze out an arm, or get her feet on something solid…

The samurai dropped to his knees, turning his attention away from her, further hammering in his confidence in her failure.

“I wonder if she could be led to believe Aku is the evil one, not me?” he rubbed his index finger across the underside of his bottom lip, right where his chin might have been under that scraggle of hair there. He seemed more interested in speaking about her like she _wasn’t right there_.

“Lecherous snake!” she shouted, to remind him that she knew what he truly was. The samurai flicked his dark-eyed gaze back up to her, giving her another irritated look.

“Perhaps not.” he murmured, again more to himself than Ashi.

The ground began to shake, far more tumultuous than anything Ashi had felt ever before. Something _huge_ moved the earth under them, and for just a split second Ashi half-hoped that it would be an appearance from Aku, come to witness or assist her in finishing the samurai.

Instead they were both thrown into the air as a gargantuan wyrm burst up from the ground, teeth jagged and taller than most trees and framing a mouth that yawned open under them. Ashi barely had time to think about the swell of panic that rose in her chest, because as they both fell she looked over to realize the samurai was vulnerable. He had no footing, and was falling freely amidst all the other debris.

She could use this.

 _Survive. Fight._ _Kill the samurai_.

She hit a tree that was passing her with her feet, and launched off it in a backwards roll that allowed her to grab the sickle in her teeth. She landed on another tree, and then propelled herself towards her enemy.

Ashi took him by surprise, slicing into his side just as he turned to see her dart by him. She relished in the burst of blood from his skin and his cry of surprise and pain.

She turned in the air to plant her feet against another tree, and began to leap between the two back and forth as she tried to get the man again. He contorted as she flew by him each time afterwards, her element of surprise gone but her advantage with her weapon still in her grasp.

One tree turned partially as it continued to fall, and Ashi miscalculated her landing. It smacked into her chin, and everything started to go fuzzy.

She only vaguely felt hands wrap around her shoulders and knees, holding her close. Yet it still caused sparks of fear, of hate, of anger and mistrust and—

She woke up some indeterminate time later, her head throbbing, but it was ignored in favor of recognizing the samurai still lingered near, and realizing the samurai had _touched_ her.

Her shoulders and knees burned suddenly, the ghost of his hands lingering on her. She resisted the urge to retch. How _dare_ he! It was no wonder he was the Master Aku’s enemy. His hands could only cause destruction, chaos, and death; it is why Aku despised him so, for whenever he tried to create a beautiful world the _samurai_ would come to dismantle it.

Thankfully, it was at that moment the strange, soft pink thing the samurai sat upon collapsed with a pathetic “ _pfft_ ” sound, shooting out a cloud of noxious green gas. The man stood, turning quickly, coughing while waving his other hand and trying to disperse the smell.

Ashi took in their surroundings and amusement at the reality of their situation began to set in: in the belly of a leviathan, doomed to the whim of a creature beyond both her or the samurai. She couldn’t help but laugh at it all.

It was better than giving in to her mother’s angry voice, in the back of her mind, that hissed with threats of how she had failed regardless.

She would fight the samurai for her master until death took her.

 

_Ashi watches the ladybug fly off, and something ancient inside the core of herself cracks._


	2. II

Ashi couldn’t really answer truthfully why she had chosen to follow the samurai and seek her answers. She easily could have done that on her own, but there is something _fitting_ to it that it is the samurai’s company and guidance she keeps. But beyond that, she didn’t have an answer for _why_.

The samurai, for his part, didn’t question her motivations either. He merely let the silence sit and Ashi follow. Though she burned to the brim with questions, she wanted to see where he thought to lead her.

And, when they arrive, the sight is enough to vanish all words on the edge of her tongue.

“Here is your truth.”

Ashi was still absorbing the sight and reality around her. The words Jack told her were clashing hard with those she had been raised with. Aku being the evil personified? Aku being the one to destroy nature for nothing but the destruction of the innocent?

Her head was spinning with it all. The hatred for the samurai still lingered in her, like a seeping wound, but now she was filled with yet more questions she couldn’t answer.

The samurai had spared her, and offered to show her this world. A world she had never known except in the speeches from her mother to glorify Aku. Yet it was so much bigger than she had thought, and being able to experience it was…

Well, she had stopped dreaming of such a thing long ago. There had only been her entire life’s goal to kill the samurai, and nothing had any room to exist beyond that.

And yet now the possibility lay before her.

Ashi’s vision tilted, and she collapsed to the ground to steady herself. She clenched her fingers into the dirt, and realized with a slow start that the reason the ground was grey was because it was primarily soot.

A memory of burning flesh raced to the front of her mind, and she barely held herself back from being sick then and there. She felt dizzy and disoriented, but her focus snapped back into place when she felt a touch on her shoulder. Ashi immediately jerked away, instincts pushing her to know that an attack was imminent.

She tilted her head up and around to look over her shoulder, where the samurai was in a crouch, his hand hovering a few inches from her shoulder. His face was slightly scrunched, half-distaste and half-surprise. Ashi narrowed her eyes at him.

“What are you doing?”

His eyes drifted up to meet hers, and he frowned a little more deeply.

“I only wished to know if you were alright,” his fingers curled in slightly, “I know it must be much to take in.”

Her gaze went back to the hand, and she wondered what he could have meant to do with it on her shoulder. But the samurai had already let her live, why would he seek to attack her now?

A long moment of silence held in the air between them, before finally the samurai seemed to settle on his decision and lowered his hand a few inches.

“I am not going to harm you. It was nothing more than a gesture of comfort.” He let out a sigh, “It is something one does to show concern for another.”

And now Ashi had a new subject to puzzle out. Touch? For comfort? That was…

_Weak!_

“I do not want your _comfort_ or your _concern_ ,” she grit out, “I only want answers.”

The samurai kept looking at her like she was some great, annoying puzzle, but that feeling was mutual at this point. Ashi couldn’t say she _liked_ having her whole understanding of the world thrown like this, but she _needed_ to know.

“I apologize, then.” He brought his hand back to rest on his knee.

Yet, her mind couldn’t stop drifting back to the hand that had touched her shoulder. She looked back at the samurai.

“Why?” she snapped, and when he made a baffled expression she clarified, “Why would you wish to comfort me? Why would feel _concern_ for me?”

For a long silence, his eyes drifted towards gazing at the ground and he seemed to recede into himself. Finally, she made a noise of frustration and stood, hastily brushing the ashes off her hands.

“You appeared to be in pain. I…” He struggled with himself, working his jaw and eyes darting off to the side before drawing up to look at her again, “I show concern because...because I do not wish to see anyone suffer. I would like you to know at least one kindness in this world, so you do not think it is only full of hate and pain.”

Ashi frowned in confusion, then looked away, out over the hills to where the sun sat low on the horizon.

Why was she here? What was she actually seeking? Why did she still _wonder_ about this “comfort”?

He wanted her to know “kindness?” Her resolve stiffened, though her mother’s voice grew weaker under the weight of old, buried memories. A need for something similar to what the samurai had intended, destroyed and crushed under a sharp foot.

“You can do nothing to ease me now.”

Ashi clenched her fist and continued moving on.

 

_It is only now, when Jack is gone, that Ashi knows the hole he leaves in the world._


	3. III

Ashi didn’t understand the sight before her, but she knew _something_ was wrong. These creatures: ethereal, wispy at their edges, not really here in this plane of existence, spoke of “the end” and “failure” and Jack was raising that sword with the too-sharp tip aiming inwards—

The fact the ghastly being could hit her at all took Ashi by surprise, but she would not allow this to go any further. Jack _cannot_ truly believe there was no hope left; that everything he had done was for naught.

The entire time she fought with the creature, Ashi screamed at Jack about what she’s seen, what she now knew and believed, but all she wanted to do was cast that sword from his hands so she could hold them in hers. What had he told her not that long ago? That people naturally desired touch when they sought comfort?

Was this what he had felt when he saw her internal conflict? To _give_ comfort as well?

Once, when she was a child, after enduring another day of being beaten upon by the older women and being forced to immerse themselves in the boiling hot ground, Ashi had witnessed one of her sisters start to cry. It wasn’t the first time, she was sure, but it was the earliest memory she had of such a thing. Ashi had felt something in her tug at her sister’s pain, but she’d been so afraid, worrying if that was weakness and if she would be punished for interfering in any way.

Within a few minutes, that sister had been dragged away by their mother, and in those dark, cavernous hallways they heard her screams rebound _everywhere_.

She had been brought back hours later in a heap of her own blood and broken bones. There had been no more tears from any of them afterwards.

But she was not a child trapped in a world of horror anymore. And the one person that freed her from it, who gave her life back to her, now sought to take his own.

Ashi hit the gravemarker hard enough to knock all the breath out of her, and she wheezed and groaned as pain arced up her body. She was half-trapped under the stone, but she would not stop, she would not give in, until the samurai was saved.

“ _Death follows in your wake— men, women, **children**_ ,” the apparition snarled, and Jack trembled, “ _Yes...all those children dead because of you!”_

Ashi pulled herself half out, realizing what was being referenced.

“No,” she shouted, “No, the children, they’re alive! You _saved_ them!”

‘ _Please,’_ she thought, desperately, ‘ _Please just hear me, just listen to me, Jack…_ ’

She scrambled at the rocks, successfully dragging her legs out. But before she could stand, the creature flew directly for her once more, sword raised high to strike her down.

“ ** _No more words!_** ” it shrieked, and Ashi tensed to move or roll or _try_ anything even with every part of her collectively aching.

The sound of metal hitting metal rang out, and Ashi gawked as Jack suddenly stood before her, holding the creature off.

In the dim light, Ashi saw the samurai— the hero the others in her journey had spoken of, the enemy she had been trained all her life to kill— rise up to defend her.

It swung again, but Jack deflected the blow, then swung his own sword across it’s midsection. It’s glowing eyes went wide, giving an impression of surprise, but then vanished in beams of light.

Jack turned his head around to stare down each of the other creatures, and one by one they sank back into the ground. Retreating, because he was fighting back.

Now the silence hung heavily between them, and after a few seconds Jack rotated his head around to look over his shoulder at Ashi. He blinked, and grew a slightly baffled expression.

“I, um...like your hair,” he said, hesitated, then smiled awkwardly, “And dress.”

She couldn’t help but smile back, and he seemed relieved by that, dropping his shoulders an inch.

Ashi lifted herself to her feet, her legs shaking, and Jack stepped around, reaching a hand out to her but stopping a few inches from his body. He frowned at himself, starting to withdraw.

“I am sorry, I forgot—”

Ashi grabbed his hand with both of her own, perhaps a little tightly given his flinch, and held it there between them.

It felt...nice. Relieving, now, since Jack hadn’t been harmed.

“Is this,” Ashi looked up at him to meet his startled gaze, “Comforting?”

Jack stared for a long few seconds, before slowly his face cracked into a smile, and then into a chuckle. Ashi didn’t understand that, either, and she cocked her head at his strange humor. What was so funny?

“Yes,” he murmured, and his face was kind, “It is. Thank you, Ashi. For this and...saving my life as well.”

Ashi felt another wave of ease wash over her. This...this “comfort” was wonderful. It was not weak, as she had long feared; it felt...strong, to hold his hands in hers and know she was giving him comfort and he liked it. She felt like she had done something right and truly good, beyond helping Jack from those creatures. He was smiling again, and it was a weight off of Ashi’s chest unlike anything she’d felt before.

“You saved me, first.” she retorted, but Jack shook his head.

“There was no debt to repay, if that is what you think,” his hand squeezed hers back, “But I believe...we are both grateful to each other.”

And Ashi couldn’t agree more.

 

_Ashi will not let anything happen to him, not after they have both fought so hard, and he has become her beacon of hope outside of the one she understands he gives to others._


	4. IV

After all these years, all the pain, the anger, the _sorrow_ Ashi had repressed or redirected towards Jack finally has its true target opposite her. And yet, despite knowing her mother _has_ to die, Ashi still felt the most minute amount of a sense of loss, directed towards knowing, now, all that she had lost in those years. Even, buried deep within her, the relationship she knew she had wanted from her mother and her sisters.

The comforting needs she had never known.

There is something she suspected was disrespectful about using the horn of one of the dead rams Jack had lamented over, but while Ashi sympathized deeply for his concern the urgency of needing a weapon against her mother outweighed all else. It was sturdy, and useful up until the moment she needed to throw it to stop the knife from striking Jack.

Now, they duel with only their bodies as weapons. Just as Ashi had been trained by her to do as well.

“How could you betray your family?” her mother snarled, kicking Ashi in the head, “He killed your sisters!”

Ashi fell, but then slipped back up to her feet in an instead. Her mother unsheathed her claws, charging for her.

_“And you let him live!”_

The older woman shrieked, missing Ashi’s head by inches as she dodged under that swing, then made for another pillar.

“No!” Ashi shouted, her emotions boiling in her, “ _You_ killed them!”

She had come to terms with the deaths of her sisters. But they had never had a life to begin with— like she had once been. They had never been given a choice, or that _chance_ to have their own lives. They had been made for death. _That_ was what the weight of her regret, and her fury towards the one who had taken their lives away from them.

Ashi rounded on her mother when she heard the sound of a body flying through the air, and let her mother cut deep into the stone before countering her every swipe.

“We were made for one purpose,” she went on, “To kill! Our fate was sealed the day we were born!”

Ashi wanted to scream, to cry, or to break down— maybe all three. She had only come to know the full depths of the _human_ aspects of _life_ she’d always wanted thanks to Jack. The things that, when she’d been small and her whole world had been her mother and her sisters, she’d never been given any ability or opportunity to understand those desires. She’d never been allowed a voice to say them. Had never been given room to reach out. Never permitted to be who she _was_.

The pillar collapsed on her, and Ashi emerged from the rubble several seconds later to see her mother racing towards Jack.

Something dark stirred in her before clawing its way up through her stomach as she ran forward, reached for a discarded arrow, and hurled it towards her mother with all those years of memories packed into it.

The arrow struck true, skewering Ashi’s mother upon it and carrying her limp body tumbling over the side of the cliff.

Her scream rang in Ashi’s head as she collapsed from exertion, and blacked out.

Sometime later, she awoke to find a strange face staring down at her and whispering her name.

She blinked blearily as her vision cleared, watching as the face smiled down at her for it, and even then it took a few seconds for Ashi to realize…

“Jack?”

He stood, nodding, and said in a _familiar_ voice, “Yes.”

She followed him up, noting the weapon at his side. Her heart leapt in her chest.

“You got your sword!” she beamed up at him, and then finally took in the full sight of him.

Impulsively, Ashi reached up to touch his chin, now clear of the beard. He was so different, but she knew it was still him. He just now _looked_ every inch the man that all those people had seen and admired.

Her fingers brushed across his skin, and for one moment Ashi was thrown back into something like a panic.

_She was not allowed to touch, to wonder, to—_

Yet, he didn’t reprimand her, or slap her hand away. He didn't _harm_ her for her curiosity.

It was...grounding. With her mother now dead, it seemed like that part of her life grew further away still, and Jack had been reformed into a brighter, stronger light in it.

“It is different.” she explained.

“Good different, I hope?” Jack smiled, his eyes soft as they looked down at her.

His hand came up gently, very gently, to cup the back of her hand. His touch was still so warm, just as it had been even when she’d hated him for it. The heat pooled in her stomach, and she found herself smiling back up at him.

Ashi could see that his personality, his soul, had been the same person this whole time. It had just been buried under years of pain.

They were not so dissimilar in that way, she supposed.

 

_His weight is a furnace against her body, even in the midst of battle, and the hand around her waist is a fire burning hotter than the one she once bathed in._


	5. V

When it became clear they had to track their pursuer down, Ashi felt all her old instincts flare back to life. It was easy to get back into hunt and the kill. It felt like stretching an old muscle again, but different this time: she would be _with_ Jack.

It was a whole new experience to be defending life while ending another. But she wanted to help Jack, to see his quest through to the end now. Even if it meant facing Aku himself, Ashi vowed to herself that she would be at Jack’s side.

It was a strange thing, she mused as they slowly stalked along the empty hallways, because it had suddenly become second nature to her to want to defend Jack. She hadn’t even thought about it when they had faced the assassins earlier, she just had— reacted.

_The brush of his skin against hers—_

She shivered at the memory. In the moment, it had been a distraction, but why? She was usually more focused than that. She wouldn’t let anything deter her from her goal.

She had to push those thoughts aside again when the creature— or, mass of _creatures_ — rose in front of them again.

However, now Jack was the one acting strange, fumbling with the weapon said to kill the creatures. But neither of them knew how to activate it, even though they were in the midst of battling the composite monster. They didn’t have _time_ for this.

Ashi tried herself, but the whole surface of the thing was smooth, though there appeared to be buttons. She attempted to press in on each of them, at least until she felt something crawling up her legs.

She shrieked, standing and swiping off the creatures, but her clothes fell in pieces to the floor. She felt an out-of-place flare of disappointment; she’d liked that outfit.

The lack of protection was strange to feel, now without any layers of new or dead skin or even her leafy clothing, but they were in the middle of trying to _survive_ and _why was Jack acting so weird?_

He didn’t need to point out that she was naked— she knew. It wasn’t what was important right then, but that was all that he seemed to be concerned with. It wasn’t even the lack of a layer between the creature’s mouths and her skin, he was babbling something about how “men and women are different” and she couldn’t really be bothered to care.

He ran by her, dropping his robe over her shoulders. Nevermind, it was a _gi_.

Ashi stopped long enough to give him a confused stare.

“You’re acting weird.” she felt the need to point it out, at the very least.

“Me? Weird? Me?!” he scoffed, cutting through another wave of creatures before bursting out into a laugh that sounded forced and...strange.

It only made her more confused. Did he not see that, if this was meant to offer her protection, it would leave him exposed to the creatures, and that was—

Unacceptable?

Ashi was struck with the realization that she _needed_ Jack to live. That it was _unacceptable_ if he died, even more so now after they had come all this way. But it also went deeper than that, something that tugged in the center of her chest, and the thought of him dying made it ache so deep she almost gasped.

And it wasn’t the same as the fear of retribution from her mother, back in those days. This was closer to her desire to comfort him, and the lightness in her chest when she made him smile. It was a desire to protect, and to defend what she knew was good in this world.

So when the creatures surrounded them there would have never been a need for him to ask her to cover him, she was ready to do so without question.

...But it was too much, and they were being overwhelmed too quickly. Ashi turned back to Jack, because they couldn’t help each other if their only hope of survival wasn’t activated.

Jack gave a shout just as the creatures swarmed, and they both screamed.

She managed to break her head free to shriek in pain more, feeling hundreds of tiny mouths biting at her skin all at once. She saw Jack’s head also emerge, but he was also crying out in pain, unable to move.

Ashi was sure they were going to die. That they would only be able to watch each other be eaten alive, and her heart started to wither in her chest.

They called out to each other, their voices filled with mirrored pain, but there was nothing they could do.

In a wild, errant thought, she wanted to die first, so she didn’t have to watch him.

Then, something exploded with electricity— Ashi concluded it must have been the device— and Ashi felt it crackle over her skin. The creatures were jolted with it too, but she could hardly pay attention as she was zapped.

When she could see again, the creatures were all dead or blown up, evidenced by the gooey bits and blown-apart bodies of the creatures everywhere, and a distinctly foul, _roasted_ smell to the air. She and Jack both arise to their feet, both unsteadily, but both ready to fight again.

When nothing arose from the piles of carcases, Ashi let herself relax a fraction. They had lived, and her chest was pounding with both battle exhilaration and joy at having seen the both of them make it through.

She was sweaty and grimy and tired down to her very bones, but when she turned Jack was looking at her with wild, pleading eyes, and when he stepped forward she stepped towards him, her heart pulling her forward with a need for something comforting that she couldn’t define.

When he pulled her close and put his lips on hers, suddenly everything _fit._

Jack shot back suddenly, stammering an apology, but Ashi didn’t let him get far. She hooked her hands around his shoulders and yanked him back down. She didn’t know how to do this, but he did, and slowly his hands encompassed her. He held her, and allowed her to hold him.

And this— this was what she’d been reaching for.

 

_She’s fighting every inch of herself, but no matter what she tries she continues hurting Jack; and she’s scared and pained and she can’t— stop—_

 

Ashi drowns in darkness.


	6. VI

She fought, but there was nothing she could fight with.

She screamed, but the sound went nowhere.

The darkness pulled her down, further and further until all she could do was hope Jack had the strength to end it.

_...sh…_

It was too much to grasp and yet nothingness at once.

In some instinctive way she knew what was going on around her, but it was more _feeling_ than any other senses. She couldn’t see Jack, but that was probably a good thing.

She couldn’t bear to see his face when she failed to protect him.

Deep in that darkness, she tried to conceptualize her memories of him, in some hope that it might pull her free.

She remembered the hatred she’d first felt when he’d rescued her, in the leviathan’s stomach. How his touch had burned, because she’d despised it and him. How much she had wanted to kill him for it and everything else she’d thought he’d done.

And the ladybug, he’d treated so gently. A harmless insect, that she’d only seen mistreated before.

Ashi was tossed and turned, thrown about in the tumultuous storm that was the fight for control of herself.

She recalled seeing the burnt field, and the one lone tree blooming in beauty, but all by itself. The feel of the soot between her fingers, and the first time Jack had reached out to touch her in comfort. A comfort _despite_ her still expressing her distaste for him, and her confusion over his sentiments behind it. But still feeling a connection that blossomed into seeing it anew.

And the feeling of loss when he’d left her, and coming to realize just how much he meant to the world. And, somewhere deep down, helping her on her own journey to realize just how much he meant to her.

The darkness stretched her limb from limb, then shoved her into herself as tight as she could go, and then until she cried with pain again.

She knew the memory so well now, of that horror of seeing him about to do something unthinkable, goaded by the guilt of his past and the weight he felt upon his shoulders. Acting without thought, and reaching out to him with a desire to show him the same sentiment he had tried to give to her.

And she, wanting nothing more than to ease him, and even to help him carry the weight of the world, no matter what it would cost her.

There was so much going on all around her. She could determine that much. But it was all just noise and the smell of death and the feeling of _hurt_ everywhere.

A deep sadness echoed in her, remembering the conflicting feelings over her mother. She was glad she was dead, a sense of revenge and due justice fulfilled, but— again— knowing that what she had wanted had been provided by Jack, and not the ones she had _wanted_ to express comfort with and for from an early age, stung deeper now that the pain had been re-exposed thanks to Jack showing her the way. But she knew, even before then, that she would have laid down her life to protect his, even if he weren’t the destined savior of this world.

And then those feelings taking on a new, never seen form, the heat of his touch bringing feelings and sensations that were unfamiliar but far from unwanted within her.

She felt a ghostly ache for Jack, like he had taken a place in her that, without him, left a gap in her own _self_ she couldn’t fill.

_...Ashi!..._

Something…

And the touch of his lips upon hers, and just _knowing_ , even if she didn’t have a name or idea for what to call it. But she wanted it, almost desperately, not just because it was touch but because it was _his_ touch.

Suddenly, she could feel him near, so very near— but she couldn’t reach him. The darkness, the constant struggle to keep even the smallest part of herself above it, was too strong.

There was no hope.

Ashi descended further in, because it was easier than trying to push back anymore. She no longer had the strength for it. She didn’t know what to do, what to think, what to _feel_...beyond the inevitable defeat.

But his voice still drew closer, pursuing her, until it was undeniably _real._

She struggled, but finally managed to cast out into the darkness once more, “Jack?”

“Yes!” he called out, “I am here! But Ashi, you must fight it! Fight it!”

She was so tired. She had tried everything.

It was just so good to hear his voice, even one last time.

She closed her eyes.

“I can’t.” her voice was weary, weak from the constant screaming.

“Ashi, you must!” he shouted, pushing at the darkness, his eyes wide and desperate, “I— I love you!”

She didn’t understand. She— the word had no _meaning_ to her.

She finally broke into a sob as she sank in further, and Jack cried out when it attempted to collapse on him. He shoved it back again, and she opened her eyes to see his distraught face as she was slowly absorbed. It hurt, more than anything, to see him look at her like that, but more than that she still felt so lost and helpless. She couldn’t help him, any more than she could help herself.

“I d-don’t,” she stammered, tears clouding her vision, “I don’t know what that is. I’ve ne-never—”

He shot his hand out, taking her fingers and holding them tight.

“It means I want to hold you as often as I can!” he continued, and tears began to form and then fall down his face as well, “I want to have you by my side for the rest of my life! I want to see you smile more, I want to hear you laugh more, I want to see you _live_ , Ashi!”

She looked at Jack as he spoke those declarations, and this time saw in him the same thing she had wanted since she had first known his touch to comfort her. There— there was the answer she had sought.

She squeezed his hand back.

Something warm and bright burst out from her chest, and she let out a cry from within the center of herself that _forced_ the control Aku had over her back, back _back_ until it was purged from her. She reached deep into that new feeling and held it in her chest, cradled it, and wielded it against the surge of darkness.

Everything came to a screeching halt, and suddenly she was _herself_.

She could still feel that darkness course under her skin, but now it was energetic and full of life. There wasn’t an accurate way she knew to describe it, but it felt like she could do _anything_. She could shape the world in the palm of her hand if she wanted; she could bend and twist her own body or mold the objects around her as she liked and willed.

It was unparalleled _power_.

But she wasn’t the same as Aku. She knew the right thing to do with this.

She still held Jack’s hand in hers.

She was going to _live_.


	7. VI + I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Many months later..._

Ashi wakes suddenly, but quickly realizes she was dreaming. The nightmares of her childhood still haunt her, but nowadays she can calm them more quickly.

She turns back to her husband, curling into his side. Sleepily, Jack makes a soft noise and shifts his arm to fit around her shoulders.

Ashi fits her hand under the blankets and rests her arm around his torso, pulling herself close in to him. Her fear settles, now that she knows it isn’t real anymore, and is replaced with solid, _real_ , warm affection.

An affection that blooms outward, causing her to stretch up and kiss his cheek, that becomes words she now knows and understands in a whispered, “I love you.”


End file.
